Sunday, November 01, 2020
Lodge month
October was Lodge month 'in these columns'. I've added a tag to the related items.
I hadn't paid much attention to Lodge before, even though his name is well known in radio circles for his studies of propagation. That wasn't his central contribution.
His constant focus was on the boundaries and borders between electricity and matter. His coherer made use of a constantly moving and re-forming layer of liquid. The device wasn't practical, but it helped to form a better understanding of modulation and rectification, which then led to the changeover from Morse to music.
His precipitator also applied a static charge to flowing gas and smoke, ionizing and cleaning the flow. This device proved to be powerfully practical, and his sons commercialized it for profit. The precipitator, as improved by Cottrell, is still in use.
Lodge's philosophy was unfashionable in 1906, and even more unfashionable now. Around 1900 the cult of "science" was in its first flush of victory. Deconstructors were everywhere, from religion to biology to math to physics. Purpose was dethroned and replaced by Lord Random.
Lodge, with impeccable credentials as an experimenter AND theorist, discussed the boundary between static spiritual charge and the moving material world. He countered the purpose-killers and psychopaths who were starting to take over the world and now have completely conquered it.
The essence of mind is design and purpose. There are some who deny that there is any design or purpose in the universe at all: but how can that be maintained when humanity itself possesses these attributes? Is it not more reasonable to say that just as we are conscious of the power of guidance in ourselves, so guidance and intelligent control may be an element running through the universe, and may be incorporated even in material things? If we could grasp the entire scheme of things, so far from wishing to shatter it to bits and then remold it nearer to the heart's desire, we should hail it as better and more satisfying than any of our random imaginings. The universe is in no way limited to our conceptions: it has a reality apart from them; nevertheless they themselves constitute a part of it, and can only take a clear and consistent character insofar as they correspond with something true and real. Whatever we can clearly and consistently conceive, that is ipso facto already existent in the universe as a whole; and that, or something better, we shall find to be a dim foreshadowing of a higher reality. That is my creed, and, optimistic though it be, it seems to me the only rational creed for a man of science who, undeterred by any accusation of dualism, realizes strongly that our entire selves — our thoughts, conceptions, desires, as well as our perceptions and our acts — are all but parts of one stupendous whole.LIFE IS PURPOSE.
Labels: Lodge
¶ 10:06 PM
